PayPal's president David Marcus is set to move to Facebook Inc this month to run the social media firm's messaging division as the newly created vice president of messaging products, Reuters reported.

PayPal, owned by eBay, has shown healthy growth under Marcus. During his tenure he has overseen development of a mobile wallet and retailer point-of-sale systems. Yesterday's announcement was a preamble to a 2% dip in eBay stock in after-hours trading.

Facebook's messaging services are under threat from a bevy of free or cheap messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired in February for $19bn, a price tag 13 times that of Facebook's entire 2013 revenue, according to financesonline.com. A Facebook spokesperson said WhatsApp will not be part of Marcus' brief.

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"I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty again attempting to build something new and meaningful at scale," Marcus said in a post on his LinkedIn page yesterday. He added that his decision to move was based on a discussion with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in which Zuckerberg "shared a compelling vision about mobile messaging".

In a blog post, eBay chief executive John Donahoe stressed the strong leadership team Marcus was leaving behind and that PayPal was still set to meet 2015 projections.